Amazon uses agentic AI to heal problems “in the seams”

In every company, there are seams—handoffs and gaps between systems and teams that no one owns. Problems that lie in these seams are often left unresolved. Online megaretailer Amazon is looking to use artificial intelligence (AI) agents to help seal those gaps.

Speaking at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) EDGE Conference on Tuesday, Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, highlighted three agentic AI solutions that the company has been able to scale and benefit from.

Ad hoc pickup agent. This application is designed to handle the unscheduled pickups that are needed as a result of an unexpected event such as a volume surge or a truck that doesn’t show up.

“Until recently an operations associate would spend 15 to 20 minutes evaluating each request and then make a judgement call,” said Larsen. “So we automated the process with AI. Now when an ad hoc request comes in, an [AI] agent instantly evaluates shipping history, root cause, and network capacity. It then returns a decision. No manual review required.”

This story was originally published by Supply Chain Quarterly. Read the full story at Supply Chain Quarterly →